Boston Phoenix holds Ric Ocasek's late-'70s leather jacket for ransom

We were very disappointed to learn that you did not want to talk to the Boston Phoenix about the Cars’ new album, Move Like This, and your upcoming homecoming gig May 26 at the House of Blues. We were so excited for the opportunity, we weren’t even going to bring up how hard the new single “Sad Song” reminds us of the Full House theme song. Whatever happened to predictability, the milkman, the paper boy and evening TV, anyway? We’ll never know.

But when an anonymous source provided us with your old leather jacket from a few late-‘70s press photos -- complete with metal Metro nightclub pin! -- we decided that if we can’t talk to Ric Ocasek, we can at least pretend to be you. So we passed it around the newsroom, and the entire Boston Phoenix staff -- well, those who bothered to show up today, at least -- all tried it on and posed for our photographer like you did in the “Just What I Needed” video. It fit some of us better than others, just as some interviews fit our pages better than others.

If we don’t hear from you within 24 hours, we’re giving the jacket to Stuff Magazine for their summer fashion issue. Be warned.